U.S. Central Command’s Twitter Account Appears to Be Hacked
Menacing messages showed up on the government agency’s Twitter feed on Monday afternoon.
Hackers appeared to strike the Twitter account of the U.S. Central Command on Monday afternoon, tweeting threatening messages and images from @CENTCOM. About 40 minutes after the first tweet appeared, the account has been suspended.
The avatar and cover photo of the @CENTCOM account had originally been changed to feature a black-and-white image that reads "Cybercaliphate" and "i love you isis," presumably referring to the terrorist organization the Islamic State. It's unclear who the hackers are at this point.
"We won't stop! We know everything about you, your wives and children," reads one tweet.
NBC reports that U.S. defense officials have confirmed that @CENTCOM has been hacked and are "scrambling to deal with the issue." A defense official told NBC that the hack is "clearly embarrassing, but not a security threat."
At Monday's White House press briefing, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that the White House is taking the apparent hack "seriously" but that they are still looking into what has happened and don't have more information to share at this time.
The avatar was later changed to the default Twitter egg, and the cover became blank:
The hack came just as President Obama was speaking on the importance of bolstering cybersecurity and protecting privacy. He outlined a bill that would require companies to notify their customers in the event that their personal information is hacked.
"This is a direct threat to the economic security of American families and we've got to stop it," Obama said in a speech at the Federal Trade Commission. "If we're going to be connected, then we need to be protected."
Obama will meet with congressional leaders on Tuesday to discuss economic and national security issues, and will then travel to the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center to tout efforts to increase voluntary cybersecurity information sharing between the private sector and the government.
The @CENTCOM account is not verified by Twitter, but this USA.gov website confirms the handle is managed by the federal government.
Other digital properties of Central Command, a division of the Department of Defense, appear to have been hacked, including its YouTube page, which has two newly uploaded videos. CENTCOM's official website, centcom.mil, links to the affected YouTube and Twitter accounts. That YouTube page was later suspended. It's other apparently official social accounts, including Facebook and Pinterest, appear to be unaffected at this time.
The account has some federal defense employees in shock. "Parts of the Pentagon at a standstill as troops, [civilians], huddle around computers and watch tweets go up" on the hacked @CENTCOM account, tweeted The Daily Beast's Nancy Youseff.
This is a developing story and will be updated with more information.
Brendan Sasso and Matt Berman contributed to this article.
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